The Official Imagine cup 2020 Bootcamp was dated to be held on November 2,2019 here at Kathmandu. The participants who were accepted into this program were welcomed by Mr. Pradeep Kandel, Microsoft Imagine Cup Bootcamp Field Contact for Nepal on behalf of Microsoft Singapore and the major target of this event was to focus on imagine cup 2020 with the moto “DREAM IT, BUILD IT, LIVE IT”.

Students were asked to fill out the forms a week ago and only the selected ones actually got the chance to be a part of this wonderful event. This event was fully supported by Microsoft Singapore and the MSPs (Microsoft Student Partner) because of which they were able to bring students from around 20 different colleges under a single roof and we had a successful event with around 100 plus participants.

The event kick-started at 9 am sharp with registrations along with warm cups of tea, coffee and breakfast after which Mr. Pradeep Kandel who is also a Microsoft MVP hosted the event by welcoming everyone. He basically gave us a quick summary on the industrial revolutions that has taken place since 1760 till today. He also talked about the hottest tech trends and summed it all up by saying “Technology has now been able to solve the world’s biggest problems. The bigger the challenges are, the larger are its opportunities”. He also drew our attention with some facts and figures that 65% of students will do the jobs that currently doesn’t even exist and, in the years to come, 70% of the jobs will require technical skills as stated by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At around 10 am we moved forward to the experience sharing from the former imagine Cup winners: Melisha Ghimire, Milan Thapa and Eida Rijal. They talked about their success and failure stories and how they reached that level of success. They also encouraged the participants to have ideas that solved problems to make an impact on the world and use those technologies that might be useful for the future and make you stand out from all the rest. “The real-life journey started after Imagine Cup” is what they had to say when asked on how life was after Imagine cup. They also suggested the participants on all the possible alternatives they could make before they apply for this year’s imagine cup. “WE DREAMT IT, WE BUILT IT AND WE LIVED IT” were their last words.

We then had a video conference from Microsoft with Terence Lim, Technical specialist, Asia who gave some helpful competition tips. He talked about the art of pitching, how to form a team, have a clear understanding of the problem, targeting audience, market research, engagement with experts, and come up with similar solutions as well.

As the clock struck 11, we moved towards the experience sharing session with the MSP teams. All the new MSPs introduced themselves and shared their experiences. The new MSP 2020 members included Mr. Manish Bhattarai, Mr. Prajin Khadka, Miss. Simran KC, Miss. Rashila Karki, Mr. Aadit Babu Pandit, Mr. Diwash Shrestha. Mr. Sambhav Bhurtel and Mr. Rocky Mishra talked about their stay in Australia and Singapore respectively to attend their MSP summit. Their stories brought goosebumps among the audiences.

After about an hour we again had a session with Mr. Pradeep Kandel where he introduced the students with cloud and Azure and how they could use it to build their winning app. He generally focused on why cloud in important and how we could use Azure, its resources and services and what benefits we had as students.  With the end of his presentation the environment was made fun and interesting with team formation they had to pitch about a product, idea or a solution that solved the problem of the world by adding up a technology component to that very idea. With this, lunch was also distributed and participants had a great time, sharing meals and discussing their ideas and solutions.

After everyone had settled down after a hefty meal, the idea pitching session started and a total of 10 teams pitched their ideas and answered the questions from the crowd. After this we had an open mentorship session where the participants got advices along with tips and tricks from top tech experts mostly from the MVP Community. Present there were Mr. Alok Kumar Pandey, Mr. Dipendra Bajracharya, Mr. Ravi Mandal, Mr. Shree Prasad Khanal, Mr. Mahesh Dahal, Mr. Nishan Aryal. Meanwhile, MSPs also joined the mentorship panel and each team was also assigned with at least one mentor while they prepared for their ideas before they pitched.

Participants were time and again asked to ensure that they register their project team for #ImagineCup submission at: https://cda.ms/15C. 

With the end of this, we had a Group Photo taken down in the hallway, that marked memories to all present ones on that wonderful evening. There were energetic souls who very much wanted to be a part of the imagine cup at the end of the event and you never know, one of them could turn out to be the next imagine cup winner. We wish them luck for their future endeavors.